


Discarding the Easy

by swanqueengranger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, One Shot, There IS discussion of Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron, There is a lot of anger and hurt between H/Hr here but it will get fixed in the end, This is a H/HR story, Too noble for their own damn goods, Too stubborn too, kind of free form
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 05:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11708097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swanqueengranger/pseuds/swanqueengranger
Summary: Sort of DH compliant, but with some very specific H/Hr scenes added. What exactly did Harry do when he uttered, "I love her like a sister"? Will Harry and Hermione ever be able to acknowledge the hurt of their choices and come full circle? This is Hermione's POV.





	Discarding the Easy

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I do not own these characters and I’m not making money off of this. They belong to JK Rowling. I’m just borrowing them for a little while.

I suppose if I had to say that my life was perfect, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Don’t get me wrong, my life isn’t horrible. Not in the common sense of the word, that is.

I’m alive. There’s a big plus considering.

My friends are happy and paired off into cheerful, expected pairs and living their lives. We see each other with regularity. I have an important and satisfying job where I get to make a real difference in the world around me…and I am recently engaged to be married to a good man that was one of my best friends during my childhood.

I understand the logic of the good of all of that. I see it with perfect clarity. 

Yet, as I sit in my small and modest flat in upper London, I can’t help but think of what I have sacrificed to be here and what I continue to sacrifice to keep the charade up.  
Please don’t think me ungrateful or longing for a life that I can’t have. 

I was complacent with my lot in life.  
_Honestly_. 

It wasn’t perfect, but then again, what is? 

Besides, it wasn’t just _my_ happiness at stake, but lots of other people: friends of mine who fought just as hard to have a semblance of normality. After all we’ve been through, who was _I_ to demand more? Who was _I_ to wish for more than I have?

And yet, that is exactly what I’m doing, isn’t it? 

I suppose it’s good that at least I have the modesty to feel guilty about it. 

I realize that I have already been granted too many chances at life to complain about that which I have been given. What kind of ungrateful person can’t see the good man that is beside them and be thankful that one of their best friends is the one they’d get to spend the rest of their life with? 

He understands me as well as he can and he listens. He stands beside me when I need him. 

Most people wish for that all of their lives and never begin to find it. 

I know that.

And that’s the problem because I also know that I can’t continue to live a lie. It isn’t fair to anyone. 

So, that’s how I’m here, staring at this crumbled picture of all three of us in my hand and wondering how we let it get to here. 

How easy it all would be now if we’d just done what wasn’t easy so long ago.

Please don’t get me wrong. 

I can’t express how much I _do_ love Ron. 

He’s a passionate man with a sense of humor that honestly does take some getting used to. He is loyal and has a good heart…but he smiles at me like I’m his life’s ambition; as if I’m the only thing in his life of which he’s entirely proud. He looks at me like I’m the one thing that he’s gotten right; the one thing with which he’s come out on top.

I can’t describe the pressure that comes with that.

He has grown into such a good man. 

So, why is it that no matter how much I try I can’t escape from the thought that I will never place him above second best?

God, I know how horrible that sounds. Don’t think I don’t. 

I can’t help it.

And don’t think I don’t know how horrible or weak _that_ makes me sound, either. 

Honestly, _before_ , I would never have told him. I _had_ never told him. I would have never let on like his was a love that I wanted below another’s, and yet now I can no longer keep up that truth.

Not now that everything’s changed. 

I can’t stop these thoughts tumbling through my head like I used to be able to. I can’t help but yearn for his arms around me at night. I can’t help but wonder how it would be to be carrying his child, cooking dinners with him or doing something as simple as merely reading together again. I can’t help wondering how I would feel to wake before he does in the morning and watch him sleeping peacefully now, as I pray he does.

It stabs my soul to remember waking before him in the early light of so many of our past occasions during the war.  
In that blasted tent on so many nights, I remember not sleeping at all. I remember sitting outside on guard and listening for any sign of approaching danger as hard as I was listening for the sounds of his fitful sleep. 

He was wracked with nightmares then, and it was I alone that was there to comfort him. Even now I can remember tearing him from visions he wouldn’t describe. 

More often I remember merely holding his hand or brushing the hair from his eyes as I whispered some words of comfort to his sleeping form. Many of those night when he had fallen back to sleep, he never realized how he had turned and thrashed, crying out in his slumber to my silent tears.

Part of me wonders, even through all that I have, if he sleeps peacefully now? Are his nightmares a thing of the past?

I don’t know fully. 

I never got those pieces of him that I wanted.

Outwardly, I haven’t held his confidence in a long time. I mean, I suppose that _was_ the natural order of things. One can only be teased with deepest longing for so long. 

It’s silly to think that we had all of this in shadows or in brief encounters in the night or midday, where we never really said what was on our minds. 

I could see it in the way he looked at me sometimes, though. It was as though he wanted nothing more than to talk to me the way we used to, out in open in broad daylight for all to see. 

Which is a bit ludicrous if you think about it. It isn’t as if we hadn’t talked. We still spoke, of course. 

How would it look if Hermione Granger and Harry Potter suddenly dismissed each other’s companies? I would imagine the questions alone would have been damaging enough to everyone, and I for one never wished to relive the past in that way. 

So, of course we spoke. Appearances dictated those formal niceties. 

You will never know how hard it was for me to express the _necessity_ that we talked and I can’t begin to express how hard it was to simply do it. To see him and stand near him, watch as she held his hand and have a _genuine_ smile on my face.

The very idea of this person I became churned my stomach. I knew what we were going into – we both did. The war was over and we made our choices. He was no longer supposed to be the most important _outward_ thing in my life.

And I tried, let me tell you. I tried with everything in me to make sure that was the way it went. 

I have never failed at anything.

I guess I should be happy that I finally have.

It’s strange that even through the pain of what we did to each other; through the pain of being chosen as not good enough, or through the anger that I sometimes couldn’t see past… he was still my _entire_ world. 

Yes, I know how bloody pathetic that sounds, but no one ever prepares you for that kind of pain. No one ever sits you own and tells you that love sometimes destroys as much as it heals. There are no books to walk you through that. 

And honestly, if he hadn’t tried to be so bloody noble and just stopped for one brief moment to consider _me_ then we wouldn’t be here now. 

So, how’d we get here, you may ask? 

Settle in, because it’s a long and complicated story.

Fitting really. 

After all, for my entire childhood I stood by him. I lived his pain for 7 years. I was his only constant. Everyone else discarded him, called him names, or chided his immaturity. He was thrust under the greatest pressure imaginable, born into a role he could not escape and ridiculed for it when he embraced it. Through all of his anger and fear and lashing out, I stood unvarying.

And it isn’t like I wanted to be in that situation. I didn’t crave the attention. Who would?

But my best friend…this boy who chose nothing of what was happening to him was all alone in the world. How could I leave him? The fact that I had fallen in love with him along the way didn’t help matters, either. 

So, of course I stayed. Through relationships, arguments, near death experiences, fights, heartaches, betrayals…a war, I stayed.

I guess I just always assumed that when he saw that I was the only one who never doubted, the only one who never questioned him, that’d he’d understand how much I loved him. Perhaps my unrequited loyalty and love was a thing of naïveté, but anything else was utterly absurd. 

How could I leave him? 

And it was there one night in that tent fighting for our lives, that he acknowledged it. The one and only time.

 _My_ sacrifice. 

_My_ devotion.

 _My_ love. 

I had seen him in every situation possible. I had seen his vulnerable side that no one else acknowledged. I alone had pulled him from despair, discarding my own life and feelings time and again to make sure he was cared for. 

For whom else would? 

He wasn’t the _Chosen One_ with me. He was merely a frightened boy whose life wasn’t his own. I would have given anything to him and I did.

He was my best friend.

When he came to me in the tent one night with tears in his eyes, there wasn’t anything else to be done. I know that now.

To this day, it doesn’t seem anything but justifiable. I guess it’s easier, more logical to place it in that regard.

He was afraid that he was going to die.

He needed love.

And there I was, like always.

I remember the look on his face as he told me he was terrified to go on. I remember wrapping my arms around him; telling him I would never leave him. I remember with such clarity how his tears felt upon my face when I told him that I loved him.

I remember his declarations of loyalty and I remember how it felt to look into his eyes as we gave ourselves to each other for the first and for all we knew, only time.

Ron returned two days later. 

I remember the blank expression in his eyes as he took me aside the morning following his return.

After he told me what had transpired between them beside that pool and I stared at him with such a breaking in my soul that I can’t adequately describe it, there was a part of me that wanted to believe he did it for the good of his friendship with Ron.

There is a larger part of me that tapped my surrender there because the logical person inside me demanded to know. Why wasn’t I good enough to tell Ron that he was right? Why was I never enough to be all he needed?

I suppose something shut off in me as I realized in the cold misty morning along the banks of a hiding place that I had wracked _my_ mind to find for us that things weren’t ever going to change. He wasn’t going to give me anything because he didn’t have it to give. I wasn’t his future because in his mind, he didn’t have one. 

Even that felt like an enabling thought.

It was as if his desperation in the moment explained his actions; as if I, the one person who had always understood his actions in the past would surely understand this one.

I couldn’t. 

I had to end this self deprecating attack on my heart. For after everything, I wasn’t good enough to be his only strength. 

_“I’m sorry, Hermione.”_

I remember that uttering with the entire fiber of my being. I have never felt emptier at an expression in my life.

I remember turning towards him once, twice, _unable_ to utter a single syllable… and I remember walking away. 

I was done with it.

That was the first time I pulled away. 

We carried on without acknowledgment of our night of clumsy and ill-conceived passion. We marched towards our certain deaths in a war that we were all too young to be so ensconced in. I turned to Ron more and more. He, at least was expressing some reaction, some loyalty towards me.

I realize how that makes me sound: as though I was merely looking for someone to pay me mind. I wasn’t. I love Ron in my own way. He may have worn it deep down, but he has always had a good  
heart, and I did know he cared for me. 

I take no pride in admitting that even after all of that pain of what he’d done; after laying awake at night and wracking my brain for some sort of intelligent understanding of what I was going through, it took seeing Harry’s sullen thoughts of Ginny for me to tilt in the end. In the Room of Requirement, as he searched the crowds feverishly for her and Ron spoke out of character in regard for those defenseless elves, I thought I realized who truly saw me.

He would be enough for me and even though he didn’t quite understand everything I stood for, he was at least trying. It seems a bit foolish now given everything that we had done, but in that split moment before going into battle, before I thought about what path it would push me towards, I made up my mind. 

I kissed him.

It wasn’t with the same intensity that I had experienced with Harry in the tent previously, and somehow I felt an emptiness with the action, but the gratifying feeling of his arms around me made it ok. When it was Harry that stopped it, the look on his face was unreadable to me. It was a first and yet only the first of _many_ times through the years that I would see that unrecognizable look.  
In my own way, I guess didn’t look back. 

The war raged on, lives were lost and yet somehow, we survived. Voldemort was subsequently destroyed and life could begin to return to a semblance of normality again. We grieved for the fallen: our friends and family. I longed to lie in my mother’s arms and hear my father’s calming voice, but I knew that journey was yet to come. 

Through it all we somehow managed to pull together, but the dynamic of our friendships had changed. I am not sure to this day if it was the battle, the loss of a part of himself with Voldemort, a form of PTSD, or merely our actions but Harry was never quite the same. 

Our friendship changed. 

It wasn’t all his doing; I assure you that I played my part. 

I was happy for him certainly and my heart wanted nothing more than to hold him when I realized he was merely _alive_ at odd and insignificant occasions after the war, but my place was different now and he seemed complacent with that. He began to distance himself and that more than anything angered me most.

Now that his suffering was finally over, it was as if his need for the brainy sidekick with the hopeless devotion was not significant enough to warrant a tenth of the relationship we once had. It hurt me more than anything I had ever experienced to say that his dismissal of that truth was the final breaking point of my resolve. 

And I have experienced a lot. 

Free to be normal in all respects, how could I have I expected him to do anything else? He returned to Ginny and the life of expected ease and normality.

But not before I had faced him again. 

It was Grimmauld Place. 

He had gone back to begin a sorting of things, Ginny had said. She and Ron were to be with the family, to grieve and I went to confront him. 

I don’t know why I thought things would be normal between us; as normal as things could ever be for us after what we had both done to each other. 

The air was thick with regret, thick with anger. I remember the tenseness between us, the unspoken words hanging in the air. 

_You kissed him._

_You told him I was like a sister… pushed me away…_

_…after we had made love…_

We stood staring eye to eye in the drawing room, next to the fireplace. I remember my breathing being shallow. I remember the anger and hurt flashing in his eyes; the fire dancing across his glasses. 

Yet, we never said a word. 

We just stared at each other. 

Funny how that not needing to speak thing we’ve always had could so easily break my heart. 

I remember him turning back to the fireplace and tossing the book in his hand into a box angrily. As it thudded loudly against the floor, it registered in me that this was perhaps his version of a metaphorical slap.

He knew it worked.

I felt my eyes narrow at the action but it was the intention behind it that stung at my senses. His eyes were boiling when he turned, forest green flashing angrily as he stared at me in defiance.

_Say something about it, then. Say something so I can tell you how utterly ridiculous you are._

_So you can lie and say that we never meant anything, you coward?_

His nostrils flared as he stared at me and I saw one fist clench at his side. 

_What makes you think we did?_

It hit me like a punch in the gut, knocking my breath angrily from me and I registered the stinging slap across his face before I even knew that I had moved. 

His eyes tore back to mine so quickly that I didn’t have time to hold back the tiny flicker of concern for him, but I recovered quickly and felt my hands clench once again. I could see the red welt beginning to form on his cheek, but he never made a move to touch it. Instead, his eyes flashed once again and bore into mine with an intensity that would have made anyone else back down.

Yet backing down from Harry Potter has never once crossed my mind. 

I closed the distance in one heartbeat and crashed my lips to his. His hands tangled immediately in my hair and I was slammed into the couch with such force that I lost all thought except his hands and lips and breath on me. We ended up tearing at each other, crying out in angered passion as he pushed into me on the hardwood floor of that dank house. We never said a word throughout, but not once did our eyes leave each other’s. 

We didn’t need to talk as he handed me a glass of water afterwards. His shirt hung open and the fire danced across his chest, sparkling off of the sweat glistening there. 

The sigh racked my frame as I turned to stare into those green eyes.

He lowered himself to the couch beside me, tucked some hair behind my ear and sighed himself.

I walked away that night with such a deep feeling of guilt. It wasn’t because of our passionate interlude, though. I felt guilty because I didn’t feel guilty at all and that was bad. Very bad for those people that we were both with. 

We both knew it. 

When I closed the door to his front stoop, I knew what would have to happen. We had made our choices and neither of us would dare disturb the tentative peace everyone had found. There was only one thing I could do…

…and that was the second time I pulled away.

The third time came quite suddenly and it changed everything. 

It had been months since our angered shag on the floor of Grimmauld Place, and I couldn’t get him out of my head. I couldn’t look at him properly, couldn’t stand to see his furtive glances when he thought I wasn’t looking for them.

Mostly, I couldn’t stand to see his attention on Ginny when I was. 

So, I stopped watching. I wasn’t going to settle for stolen glances with a man who couldn’t bring himself to leave his girlfriend for me. I wasn’t going to throw away something good to chase after Harry faithfully again. 

We had made our decisions and I would stick to it. I did not acknowledge the glances he sometimes threw my way after that. Soon enough, I noticed he stopped looking. 

It seemed sadly fitting to go unnoticed once again.

And so it was for a while. We were tight lipped, courteous to each other, but we were no longer best friends. If Ron and Ginny noticed, I think they were probably more than happy to never mention it. 

So, we found our carefree and easy complacency in our respective Weasleys. 

Don’t get me wrong, and I want to make it very clear that I do love Ron. I even thought that for a while everything was going to be fine. I didn’t need Harry like I thought I did; like I always had.  
I was going to be just fine.

That all changed last night.

It was just supposed to be the traditional Sunday dinner for the family at the Burrow. We’d done it too many times to count. 

No problems were about. No questions were in the air. 

Everything was normal until we were seated at the table, that is. 

Silly, really. 

Everyone was laughing, multiple conversations going at once. Jobs, promotions, grandchildren… I remember smiling easily.

Comfortable. 

It could have been the wine I suppose that had made me so content, but it didn’t matter.

There seemed to come a lull in the conversation as always happens at some point. The air was light still; the comfort that only family brings.

That’s when it happened: the other thing that comes from the comfort of family.

Ginny Weasley haphazardly blurted out that Harry had proposed to her and she had accepted. It was such a flippant remark, on the fringe of conversation as she reached for the potatoes.  
It was almost as if it _wasn’t_ the most devastatingly important announcement anyone had ever uttered. 

No one noticed my breathing halt or my weak smile only after my shocked, mouth agape initial reaction. I remember the table erupting into cheers and well wishes, and I remember my heart breaking as I glanced at him only to find that he was staring straight at me. 

A familiar feeling melded in my chest at the look in his eyes. My breathing quickened and I could feel the beginning of tears prickling at the back of my eyes. 

So, there it was still after all I’d done to keep it at bay.

What the hell was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just let this go? 

It wasn’t until Ron’s deep laughter rumbled beside me and he lightheartedly stated a lack of originality in a house of so many siblings that I began to get a sense of control. It was Mrs. Weasley’s gasp of delight that made me turn to him and notice the ring he held in his palm facing me. A collective gasp rose from the room as my eyes sought his.

I felt trapped with all eyes on me and at that moment, I hated everyone around that table. How could I possibly express to him that this was something he should never have done to me in public? With all those people who expected me to say yes, I felt so dirty after my sudden realization from the moment just before.

I expect everyone assumed my tears were of happiness when I clumsily nodded yes to him. I don’t even know what made me do it, really. 

Or maybe I do.

Either way, the evening turned into one of massive celebration. Everyone was ecstatic, except me and the one who should have been the most: Harry.

But I wasn’t going to be there for him this time. He had chosen Ginny to look after him. 

_She_ was to soothe his nightmares at night. _She_ would be his wife.

I found myself stumbling into an upstairs room later in the evening hoping for a moment alone only to find him sitting quietly by the window. Desperate and uncertain I began to excuse myself, but I paused halfway to the door. Something in the way he looked at me as he turned stopped me in my tracks. 

There was a moment of silence between us then in which I was sure that he wanted to speak. I was positive that I could see something in those eyes I had known so well that was long left unspoken. It unnerved me and sent a rush of remembered passion through me so quickly that I leaned one hand against the doorframe for support.

How the hell did he constantly do that to me?

I actually opened my mouth and almost foolishly and dangerously asked if he was happy. Yet, I found I was unable to resolve myself to a desire to know the answer. Instead, we stared at each other in the shards of moonlight that were filtering through the window and said nothing. 

Again.

This was becoming a pattern.

The only noise was the soft pulsing of music coming from the back yard: a celebration that was supposed to be including the both of us and yet here we were.

The silence in that room was physically palpable.

And then when I felt as though I was about to burst; felt as though if he merely said the tiniest thing or gave the smallest inclination that he felt something that I would chuck all the anger and wrap my arms around him… he did.

He stood slowly and moved towards me with a look of saddened determination, placed one hand on my shoulder with a gentle squeeze that was characteristically him, mumbled a quiet, “ _Congratulations_ ” and quickly walked out the door.

I have been called the brightest witch of my age. 

I remember things that no other human being cares admit. Yet, the thing that I have remembered with the most devastating clarity of my life was the look on his face as he walked past me last night.  
I could say that I wish I that I stood my ground; that I took all of that Gryffindor courage and shoved it into a little ball in the pit of my stomach and made him walk the line. I wish I wanted to say that I  
remained steadfast in my plan. 

I wish I could, but I can’t. Because if I had, where would we be?

Before I even knew what I had done, I _did_ open my mouth. It just seemed too final, too pathetic to let it end this way after all we had been through. We were already completely different to each other… the young girl in me couldn’t bear to lose us so absolutely.

“Are you certain?”

I remember so intensely staring at that window that I’m surprised it didn’t shatter. I remained with my back to the door, sure that he wasn’t going to hear me anyway, but then I heard the door push back open slightly and the small intake of breath as his eyes landed upon my back.

My arms were knotted across my chest as if I was clutching to whatever semblance of togetherness I still possessed.

“Are you?”

The breath left my lips before I’d even realized I was holding it in and once again, I could feel the wave of intense sadness threatening to overwhelm me. Why was this the way it was between us? Was it the same for him? Did I make his knees go weak with guilt and longing?

Or was I merely the damsel in distress for once in my life?

I felt more than heard him behind me. I could suddenly feel the warmth of his body so close to mine and I angrily swatted at the single tear that betrayed me and fell. Here was the palpable silence again. The beating of the music outside was punctuated with George’s fireworks every now and again.

“Tell me…”

Another traitor fell from my eye as I turned shakily towards him. 

His eyes were the first thing I saw. 

“Just tell me you’re sure.”

His chest was rising and falling quickly and briefly it occurred to me that the one thing I wanted most in the world was happening before me. It seemed an odd thing to focus on at that particular moment, and yet when I did, the realization suddenly trampled me. 

It _was_ the same for him. 

Suddenly these walls that we had placed between us, once so tall and unwavering, slid out of place. 

“I can’t.” 

The air thickened with that hoarse whisper. I could feel it, almost taste it on my tongue as we stared. Even the music from outside seemed to fade away.

I could feel it, but for the life of me I couldn’t place it.

Until I did.

His lips touched mine with such tenderness that I stumbled back two steps before tangling my hands in his shirt; his fingers clutching my skin as if he was afraid I would disappear. 

Desire.Longing.Sadness.Joy.Regret. 

Love.

His hands slid to the base of my neck as our lips danced. One of us whimpered, but for the life of me, I have no idea which. All I know is the slamming of the back door below us suddenly registered in my brain.

I pulled back, breath ragged and staring into those eyes that I had long ago lost myself in.

“ _Hermione._ ”

My world crashed about my feet in that one moment. Tangled in the stuffy upper room of my now fiancé’s childhood home with the man I had long given my soul to, and finally realizing with perfect clarity the mess we had put ourselves in.

“Harry? Hermione? Where are you?”

Harry’s eyes flashed at the sound of Ron’s voice below us and my eyes shot to the door in panic, but his arms tightened around me and drug them back to his own.

“Tell me you _don’t_ love me.”

His voice was low, pleading. 

This was it. We both knew it. If I told him that now, we could move on and stop doing this to each other.

“I’ve _always_ loved you, Harry. Don’t you know that by now?”

How utterly pathetic that it took this for us to finally say that out loud.

I could hear Ron at the bottom of the stairs and yet I couldn’t take my eyes off of Harry. The intense love that roamed freely in his stare broke my heart. His fingers trailed across my cheek, following the path his eyes set. In the next moment, I felt the most delicate kiss I’ve ever experienced and I melted into it. My hands were pressing against his chest as I reciprocated; trying desperately to pour everything I could into that one moment.

I felt a hot wetness on my cheek, and when he pushed away from me slowly I realized it had fallen from his own eyes. 

“I’m leaving her. I can’t keep pretending that it shouldn’t be you.” 

He allowed the statement to hang in the air for the tiniest of moments; allowed the choice that those words carried to register in my mind before he took a deep breath and dropped my hand.

“We’re here, Ron.”

I drowned in green eyes once more before the door pushed open and Ron poked his head through. 

“Hey, here you are. We’ve been wondering…”

The words died on his lips as he looked between us. 

Somewhere within me, I felt a small twinge of panic but I couldn’t summon the strength to acknowledge it.

Suddenly, I was just too utterly certain that it was _always supposed_ to be Harry. 

“Have you been crying?”

Harry took a final glance at me, turned his head back towards Ron and nodded once.

“I know. Don’t fuss.”

Ron’s smile split his face in two and he pushed farther into the room. 

“I think it’s brilliant, you old softy.”

His arms circled Harry with a hugging slap on his back. I stood, arms folded once again, shakily watching. Harry clapped him back, but his eyes sought mine over Ron’s shoulder. 

It was over in a brief moment, Ron extending a hand towards me with a smile. “Well, come on. There’s cake.”

The shaky exhalation escaped my lips and I took his outstretched hand and allowed him to pull me from the room. Harry stared after us, sighed and followed us into the night.

And there you have it. All caught up to the moment.

Now as I sit here in my flat waiting for Ron, I’m not exactly sure what all is going to come of this. I know we won’t pretend any longer. It was never fair to anyone. There is only one small problem that must be dealt with before he appears: I, brightest witch of my age, have no idea how exactly I’m going to tell my fiancé that I can’t be his wife.

All I know is that I will and so will probably be saying goodbye to one of the best friends I’ve ever had and loads more people that I have come to think of as family, if I’m honest.

Yet, with all that foreknowledge, I can feel the smile start on my face as I look to that crumpled picture in my hand. 

Why you ask? 

Because I know in my heart that however hard this will be, whatever agony there is because of our past choices, I won’t be doing it alone. Even though the road ahead will be lonely and cold, it doesn’t compare to the warmth that I have in knowing that I will never again say goodbye to Harry Potter.

We’ve finally discarded the easy.


End file.
